Wireless communication services available for mobile vehicles, such as navigation and roadside assistance, have increased rapidly in recent years. Services that may be requested while the vehicle ignition is off may include maintenance and diagnostic functions, system updates, vehicle position determination, unlocking of the doors, or vehicle alarm silencing. At the same time, the popularity of smartphones, netbooks, tablet computing devices, laptops and other portable electronics devices has also continued to grow. One area experiencing extremely rapid growth is the development of mobile applications, as mobile phones and tablets now have the capabilities to provide consumers with increasingly sophisticated programs suitable for a broad range of tasks. These mobile applications, accessible from a consumer's phone or tablet, may now be used to provide these wireless communication services available for mobile vehicles from wherever the consumer may be.
When the ignition of the mobile vehicle is off, the vehicle is placed into a powered-down discontinuous-receive (DRx) or standby state (also called a sleep cycle). Vehicle hardware, such as a telematics unit, may be placed into the standby state or DRx cycle to minimize power drain on the vehicle battery. Even while vehicle hardware is in the standby state or DRx cycle, a network access device (NAD) of the vehicle may consume power while searching for signal or waiting for a command, draining the vehicle's battery. Thus, after a certain amount of time, the vehicle may end the standby period or the DRx cycle and switch to an off mode. During certain periods of the DRx cycle and after the vehicle hardware is switched to an off mode, the vehicle hardware may be unable to communicate with a consumer's mobile application.
Thus, it is an object in part to provide a system and method for synchronizing the mobile applications used by consumers with vehicle hardware such that the consumer knows when the vehicle hardware will be available for the performance of requests through the mobile application when the vehicle ignition is off. However, while this is an object underlying certain implementations of the invention, it will be appreciated that the invention is not limited to systems that solve the problems noted herein. Moreover, the inventors have created the above body of information for the convenience of the reader and expressly disclaim all of the foregoing as prior art; the foregoing is a discussion of problems discovered and/or appreciated by the inventors, and is not an attempt to review or catalog the prior art.